Galway rewards thin wallets: the city museum is free, the best trad sessions charge nothing at the door, and the Salthill promenade is a 2km sea view for zero euro. Budget €40-50 a day including a hostel bed.
Free admission, three floors beside the Spanish Arch covering medieval Galway, the 1916 Rising in Connacht and the Claddagh fishing village. The Galway Hooker boat hangs in the atrium. Open Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, also Sundays April-September.
Ireland's largest continuously used medieval parish church, built 1320, where Columbus reputedly prayed in 1477. Entry is by donation only (€2 suggested). Look for the stonemason's gravestone and the crusader tombs in the south transept.
The Claddagh was an Irish-speaking fishing village outside the city walls until the 1930s. Walk the quay for swans on the Corrib, then follow the river north past the Spanish Parade. Nothing to pay anywhere along the route.
From the 1818 Salmon Weir Bridge you can watch salmon queue in the Corrib rapids from May to July, with the cathedral dome framed behind. The cathedral itself asks a €2 donation but the riverside vantage costs nothing.
Running since the 1700s beside St Nicholas' Church, Saturdays 08:00-18:00 plus Sundays and bank holidays. Sheridans cheese wedges, a doughnut stall, and hot curry crepes from around €6. Cash speeds things up at the smaller stalls.
A grocer since 1925 with a ground-floor deli counter selling filled soda bread rolls and hot pies well under restaurant prices. Take the food to Eyre Square rather than paying the upstairs restaurant markup.
The city's central green, free to sit in, with the Quincentennial Fountain shaped like a Galway Hooker's rust-red sails and the 14 Tribes flags along the eastern side. Buskers work the square all afternoon in summer.
Wood-fired Neapolitan pizza from a former food truck, margherita around €11 and enough for a full dinner. Queues form by 18:30 so arriving early matters more than booking, which they largely do not take.
A 2km seafront walk to the Art Deco diving tower at Blackrock, free to climb and jump from year-round. Kick the wall at the far end as locals have done for generations. Galway Bay, the Burren and the Aran Islands fill the horizon.
Ireland's largest urban community forest, 180 acres of native woodland planted from 2000 onwards, 25 minutes' walk north of the centre along the Corrib. Free, unstaffed and almost entirely visitor-free on weekdays.
An ivy-swallowed 16th-century Blake family mansion that burned in 1910, standing roofless on the Corrib bank. Reachable free on foot or by bike along the river path from Dyke Road, about 45 minutes from Shop Street.
Free live traditional sessions twice daily, typically 17:30 and 21:30, no cover charge and no ticket. Fiddle, banjo and bodhrán players rotate through the corner beside the door. A pint runs roughly €6.50.